Sigh. They're not making it easy on me. First I was going to write about the confirmation of the design of Optimus Prime's arms in the upcoming movie. And then on Thursday, there were pictures of twelve upcoming Minicons ... all with new moulds. And then today, the movie people had to confirm the Transformers appearing in the movie. I'm not in it, no surprise there.

I will personally track down and kick the first person who writes to me wailing that all fans everywhere hate the list of confirmed characters, because I have spent the last six hours lurking a dozen message boards, and the fan response has been generally positive to the announcement. Even on the boards where the posters are traditionally overwhelmingly negative.

People have been less thrilled with the latest leaked picture of Bumblebee, with the usual cries that he doesn't exactly match a twenty year old memory. He is too thin, he does not have enough outer armour to form the body of a car, his face is not cute enough ... did any of you consider, even for a moment, that you might be looking at something incomplete, that the mechanical form may be nothing more than a skeleton, and will be 'fleshed out' with CGI later? Tell me, did the Lord of the Rings fandom wail that Andy Serkis didn't look enough like Gollum without his CGI?

I'd rather speak of the Minicons, anyway. They'll be out long before the movie is, and include long-awaited beast alt-modes. In this case, they are dinosaurs. Pictures and team biographies can be found on Hasbro's site.

Q: 1) Why didnít the maximal elders send back a team to capture BW Megatron before he stole the Golden Discs?
2) What would happen to either of the THS Convoys if they were ever to arrive in the apartment?
3) Would the Insecticons accept Scrapmetal into their ranks as an honourary Insecticon?
A: 1) Because then Beast Wars would have been half an episode long instead of three seasons.

Fine, fine, an in-continuity answer - because time-travel as the Transformers have it in Beast Wars just isn't that accurate. If it was, then Ravage would have shown up earlier on, before Megatron got too dangerous. Or Depth Charge would have arrived before Rampage got out of his pod. They can get it to within a few years if they have a signal to follow, but they can't send a time-traveller to an exact moment.

2) Probably much the same thing that would happen to Alternator Prime. The Decepticons certainly don't want any sort of Optimus Prime around, and we Autobots ... well, I think Override and Evac are enjoying being in command, and I am not much for following orders even on a good day.

3) They might, if he turns out to be more than a cybernetic animal. They haven't yet. They don't let that many people become honourary Insecticons. Even Waspinator isn't one, and they like him.

Q: Dear Vector Prime,
This is Pursuit again. Thank you for your advice, however unorthodox it might be. There was a Robo-Squisher in my world, but Catseye ate it. The Buildbots would cause mayhem no matter what side they are on, and I would prefer for them to have good intentions. This aside, those hooligans have painted the entire city in polychrome for April Fools' Day ( an odd holiday imported from the humans. ) Normally, this wouldn't be so bad, but they also changed the signs on all the businesses and broadcast Omnicron, the city Guardian, singing "Numa Numa" on all frequencies. I was in the hospital for three days after that prank because my circuits overloaded and became scrambled. What would you do in this situation ( legally, with no teleportation? ) What would Safeguard do? What would the Constructicons do? What would Prowl do?
Thank you,
Pursuit
A: I suggest something along the lines of a vat of honey and packing peanuts.

Safeguard, when faced with any sort of annoyance, tends to revert to his favourite default - biting people. The Constructicons are likely to take their AU doubles and turn them into building foundations. Prowl would go off on a tangent about past lives. At least the Transmetal one might.

Q: Dear Vector Prime,
Can you send me Shortround's Generation 2 Defensor and Menasor?
A: I could, but I won't. If you still want to buy something from the Hartmans, they will be selling off much of their vintage collection at BotCon 2006.

Q: How do you feel about your first anniversary of answering questions and how do the Insecticons feel about it?
A: Given that doing this column is more trouble than it looks, I often think of retiring. Then the Insecticons check the site statistics and tell me I had better not, because this is still one of the site's most popular features. I suppose I wouldn't have anything else to do if I quit. I do feature in the Collector's Club comic, but that's only a half dozen pages every two months.

Q: Dear Vector Prime,
How is it possible for humans to breathe comfortably on Cybertron? In any and all generations when this occurance happens.
A: I believe this is related to how characters can talk in space - a breach in physics that could easily be solved by mechanical means, but it's so much easier to just ignore such things.